


In Which We Burn

by halotolerant



Category: Life on Mars UK
Genre: Diwali, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-29
Updated: 2010-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-09 05:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For beautybecks request for fic in which Sam thinks Gene is cute. In which love is about launderettes and vinegar and car parks.</p>
    </blockquote>





	In Which We Burn

**Author's Note:**

> For beautybecks request for fic in which Sam thinks Gene is cute. In which love is about launderettes and vinegar and car parks.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[character: sam](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/character:%20sam), [fic](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/fic), [fic type: slash](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/fic%20type:%20slash), [pairing: sam/gene](http://community.livejournal.com/lifein1973/tag/pairing:%20sam/gene)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **In Which We Burn (Gene/Sam, Green Cortina) by halotolerant** _

I could not resist the 'cute' idea. This is, I warn you, from the hormonal-and-wanting-chocolate school of fic composition and intended as a (hopefully) guilty-pleasure-emo-crack type of thing. I was trying to make Gene and Sam behave for a 'serious' fic and this grew out of the ideas I ditched along the way.

So, disclaimer aside:  
**Title:** In Which We Burn  
**Pairing:** Gene/Sam  
**Rating:** Green Cortina  
**Words:** ~2000  
**Warnings:** Sweet  
**Notes: **For beautybecks request for fic in which Sam thinks Gene is cute. In which love is about launderettes and vinegar and car parks.

 

In the darkness, it's the flames that catch Sam's eye.

 

A sparkling, flickering light down in the terraced rows the other end of his street, the huddle of houses just before the road curves and dips away, to rise again by the municipal multi-storey car park on the crest of the hill.

 

And normally, Sam wouldn't look out of the flat window in that direction. He wouldn't allow himself to, not at this time on this day.

 

That car park, you see, that five floors of anonymous concrete (and no CCTV, not yet) is where Gene leaves the Cortina now. He'll drive the distance from the police station or pub, wherever it is that Sam has ostentatiously left alone from hours before, only to park there at the end of Sam's long street and go on by foot. Stealthily.

 

There are things that are not wanted. There are things that are not supposed to shine out in the dark, no matter how warm or lovely Sam finds them. He had found already, when he dated Maya, that people not allowed to glow with love for just anyone. Not yet. Not back then, in future. Maybe not ever.

 

You have to blend in. Like the road. The long grey unremarkableness of it, like any road in any Northern city. From up in Sam's flat, looking down, its whole grimy length is visible, like a string of hairs pulled from the shower drain. In its sinuous twists from the car park to his tower-block it snares a pub, two off-licences, three chippies, the bench from which derelicts swear at pigeons, and a 'Specialist Bookshop'. Near the traffic lights comes the gloomy launderette. Sam idles away his Thursday evenings there, watching all six of his shirts spin round or gazing across the street at the ancient Salvation Army base, boarded up.

 

See, this is what he's realising. Slowly. Surely. Like groping out of murky water:

 

It is not that places are dull. It is not that places are foul. It is who you have with you.

 

It is…admit it, Sam. It is about being – or not – with Gene.

 

And that isn't something weird or coma-induced or Seventies or Noughties. It's just how people get to feel about other people, sometimes.

 

No need to give it a name.

 

He had that particular flash of insight on a Tuesday, queuing in the 'Salty Sue' chip shop. He forgot to ask for vinegar. He didn't notice.

 

When he walks home at night, particularly now as the autumn draws closer, the light from the chippies is wan and pale, but it's enough to keep the kids in grey school uniforms double-dutching on the pavement.

 

He noticed a while ago that the one Pakistani family on the street - the Mukherjees - set five locks on their doors as soon as their three, nervous-looking children get home.

 

Sometimes Sam is sick of waiting for the world to get better. Sometimes he isn't sure it ever does, thinks maybe he just dreamed a whole damn wonderland. One of them, at least.

 

("Eat me" he said, laughing, to Gene, once. And then, when Gene's indignant look had risen: "You should have, 'Eat me' printed on you, and then I'd have known that once I did I'd get bigger and bigger." Gene thought he was being filthy, but he wasn't. Much.) 

 

Which is why, even though he is the one beautiful thing in the whole damn road, Sam won't look out of the window on Friday nights when Gene is coming up it.

 

Sam is not some bloody princess in a tower-block. This isn't the kind of relationship – was never meant to be the kind of relationship - where you really _care_ if you see someone or not. Besides, Sam has this horrible little fantasy that Gene checks whether he's waiting or not. He imagines Gene getting to the top of the hill, past the bench with half the slats missing and being able to see him loitering in the distant window – all the evidence he would ever need that Sam has nothing else to look forward to.

 

He imagines Gene despising that.

 

Besides, a watched pot never boils, and by Friday night - bloody hell, by Friday night, after five long days and nights, Sam needs Gene to come down that road quickly, more quickly, to be there already. Sam will be sitting in his armchair by six-thirty, even though Gene never comes before seven, resolutely watching TV and practically gripping the arm-rests with need.

 

Sam always waits, though, when the door-bell rings. He'll be sat there, in the chair, but when the ring happens he'll wait a moment, get up and slowly cross the tiny room to open it. Because it's not like he's been waiting.

 

It's another part of hiding, of lights under bushels. And it makes him feel fucking lonely.

 

So that Friday evening – October, already dark – Sam's moving around the flat after his shower, wishing beyond all reason that someone would get on and invent hair gel a few decades early, and the flames catch his eye.

 

It wasn't like he meant to go to the window.

 

It's the Mukherjee's house, he notices that first, with a sinking sense of the inevitable. All lit up, almost pretty really, flames dancing in the black of the night, orange and yellow streaks of brilliant danger.

 

Shit.

 

It's just…people. What people are, what they _do_. Oh bloody hell, and the kids are there, and all those locks on the fucking doors, oh shit, shit, shit. He can feel his heart start racing.

 

Sam grabs his coat, leather cold against his skin.  Races out of the flat, down the stairs. They're slippery with urine and smashed milk bottles and he can barely maintain his footing as he skids out into the cold night air. Gene will be here soon but he can't think about that, even if he feels a selfish ball of sorrow for losing one minute, this needs to be dealt with first.

 

He's panicking already, in the back of his mind, because there's a crowd, and one of him.

 

Then he sees the house, and his breath leaves him completely. One white cloud of Sam's air escaping to the sky.

 

Because he can see the cocoa tin. The tin, with the little plastic scoop. These people have cocoa. These gathered crowds are smiling, wrapped up warm, and they are sharing plastic mugs of cocoa and chatting together.

 

The Mukherjee's front yard is filled with flames alright, all in little clay pots, arranged in a lotus pattern when you're down at the right angle to see it. Mr Mukherjee is standing at the front, brave and proud, giving out sparklers to all the kids and his smallest child is solemnly passing a red chalk to a pigtailed Mancunian girl so she too can draw stars on the asphalt.

 

"Would you credit it?" a woman near Sam is saying, as he spins round, unable to believe his eyes. It's the owner of the launderette, all twenty stone of her in her floral overalls and she's got a sparkler in one hand and a packet of chips in the other. "What was it again, love? Dee-valley?" 

 

"Diwali" someone corrects, and Sam realises it's himself. Of course.

 

Of course.

 

He turns round, seeing them, his street. His street. Someone presses a cup into his hand and steam curls round his face like a smile.

 

That's when he sees Gene, like the grand finale, coming over the hill. He has his coat collar turned up against the cold and he rubs his hands together, looking round about him at the small crowd.

 

For a second, just a second, Sam feels a cold panic that he's exposed himself, that Gene will think he came down to meet him. Which just isn't fair, because this was the first time he forgot to worry about Gene in bloody weeks, and seeing him unexpectedly ought to be even nicer than anything else, not terrifying.

 

But Gene hasn't seen him. Gene isn't really looking at anything. Gene is reaching into his inner pocket. Gene has a…a mirror, and a comb, and he's carefully checking and rearranging his hair.

 

And just…oh.

 

Gene's eyes are wide, worried. He's probing his hairline and covering the tiny beginnings of where it recedes. Then he must catch sight of a grey, because he grabs a hair and yanks it away, hard, before checking again in the tiny shaving mirror.

 

It shouldn't be biologically possible to feel like this about someone, it really shouldn't. It can't be safe. It can't possibly be one fucking bit safe.

 

If ever anyone ever glowed, Sam does, right then, right there.

 

And before tonight, he would have run. Run right away. He would have remembered that there are things that are not supposed to shine out in the dark and raced back to the safe enclosure of the flat before Gene could see him. Before tonight, Sam would have known for sure that there were many things that were not wanted in this street, not now, maybe not ever.

 

Except tonight they celebrated light, the whole street together. Tonight they all let something new in.

 

Of course, he can't exactly do what he wants, can't run up and grab Gene in both hands, kiss him long and slow or inhale the scent of his hair, can't tell him: _I would still be happy to see you if you got a flipping Mohican. I would still love you if you went bald._

 

Sam just takes a few steps forward, daring himself to.

 

Gene sees him. Blushing awkwardly and scowling, caught in the process of putting the comb away, he looks angry. Maybe a little scared. Happy, though, underneath. Happy to see him.

 

And just, bloody, fucking, swear-on-yer-mam-it's-true cute.

 

It's like bubbles, like something fizzing up from the pit of Sam's stomach to the muscles that are pulling out his grin. He's feeling this great wave of emotion and he's not hiding it and as his eyes meet Gene's Sam knows it's spilling out of him in great golden rays and he's not even scared any more.

 

In the Mukherjee's front yard, the first firework goes off. Under the cover of this diversion, Sam walks to Gene – OK, runs a little, maybe – and just fucking hugs him, close, held, near, cleaved, together, oomph kind of hug, tight as he can. Because they can and they will, and one day in about thirty years time Sam swears they will walk down this bloody street on Zimmer frames and snog in front of every house. Because it can happen, and the world will get better. They are going to make it through – him, Gene, him-and-Gene, the Mukherjees, the street – everyone - and it's all starting tonight.

 

"Eh? What's all this then?" says Gene when they move apart, voice a little scratchy under the chuckle. He's taken Sam's cold hand in his warm one, and not let go yet.

 

Sam leans in, whispers across his ear, lips near enough that he sees the goose-pimples cascade down Gene's neck from it: "Nothing. You look cute, is all."

 

"Sam…" Gene begins, warningly, but Sam's running to the flats, leading him by the hand, dashing away with a glee that makes his feet fly.

 

Inside, Gene crashes him against the door, leans their foreheads together, breathes deep:

 

"Nice to be home" he says.

 

And the lights still dancing in Gene's eyes tell Sam all he needs to know.


End file.
